Bitcoin Forum

Update:


I've been receiving lots of emails lately from people wanting to buy X6500s, but sadly, we're not going to make any more. I had an idea though, that might be very appealing to an enterprising individual that's handy with a soldering iron. Auction off a grab bag of "rejected" X6500s!

Each of the 16 rev 3 X6500s in this box was tested but did not meet our quality standards. We fully intended to go back and repair/diagnose these at some point, but ran out of time. The boards suffer from a variety of problems: possibly (although rarely) simply higher than average "invalid" shares, to (more likely) not working at all. There are no notes on what ails each board, and I have no time to plug them back in and test them. So, I'm just putting the whole box up for auction!

These are sold AS IS with NO WARRANTY or GUARANTEE.

My best guess is that probably 4 or 5 of them have a single FPGA that works perfectly, but the other FPGA has some problem that doesn't impair the other one at all (as far as I could tell and remember). Some might need a minor repair like a voltage regulator replacement, or simply a burned out fuse. Some just might not work at all for whatever reason but worst case you can scavenge the board for parts. Again, I make no guarantee about the quality or functionality of these boards.

To aid repairing, I'm going to include a spare parts kit. This will be randomly assembled from parts I have on hand, so I can't say that you won't need to order other stuff to get these working. Most importantly, there will be four brand new Spartan 6 XC6SLX150-3FG484C FPGAs included. These have never been soldered and are still in the original tray, although the vacuum packaging has been opened. I'll also include some heatsinks and random stuff that might be useful (e.g., standoffs). If you'd like more detail on the parts included, please ask and I'll roughly catalog what I have and make a list.

Starting bid is 3 BTC and the minimum increment is 0.1 BTC.

Shipping to the US is free. International shipping will be paid by the buyer.

The auction will end at midnight UTC at the end of May 6, 2013. Countdown clock below.

Timer removed. End time: 2013-05-06+19:00:00

Watching!

"seeing"

3 BTC

Additional note:

The winner of the auction must submit payment within 48 hours from receiving the payment address from me, or the offer will open to the next highest bidder.

Having seen some photos and xray scans of some of those boards, I'd guess that the majority of them should be fixable fairly easy, with just a standard soldering iron. There were pretty clear signs of some PCB pads of the oscillator chips not reflowing properly, which should be easy enough to fix.

fizzisist, please post a few pictures of those boards, and the xray scans where available :)

Here are some x-rays of the FPGAs and oscillators:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9fi69wbjj28ob6q/orbfzJ1aKW

The oscillator chips are to the right. Note that I don't know which of these boards these x-rays were, but about eight of these reject boards belonging to this x-rayed group of 10 seems about correct from my memory. Still, I want to be clear that I'm not making any claims about how easy these will be to repair.

I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow.

LOL stop trying to paint such a rose picture... I want these boards at 3 BTC. ;D

3.1  :D

 ;) 3.2

I've been wanting to learn to do SMT work some more, and this looks like a good opportunity to learn.

Supposing I were to win the auction, or buy a few pieces from the winner, what kind of tools might I need to be able to make a good repair effort?

I have a regular soldering iron, and a Hantek USB DSO.

I'm also getting this "USB Microscope": http://www.ebay.com/itm/110747608280

What else should I have?  A hot air reflow wand?

(sorry if this doesn't really belong in this thread)

Two questions:

- Do they come with 'complete assembly' (Fan, heatsink etc)
- Is the auction for 1 pcs or the whole 16 pcs lot?

Thank you!

Nothing wrong with asking that here, but it's difficult to answer, without knowing exactly what is wrong with these. A good soldering iron, flux, solder wick, and a DVM should repair at least some of these boards. Your DSO will be helpful, and the microscope is a plus. A hot air gun could be useful for more advanced repairs, but it's not going to be good enough for reballing the FPGAs if needed, I'd say.

They do not come complete, but there will be a bunch of heatsinks and fans included, just not sure how many until I dig through the parts bin and count them up.

The auction is for the whole lot:
- 16 assembled but rejected boards.
- Spare parts including 4 brand new FPGAs.

I've been asked to catalog the spare parts, and will get a rough list together today, hopefully.

Thank you for the info. In your opinion, can someone with 'laymans' knowledge and steady fingers possibly get some working with a soldering iron and a 6-pack of beer? :)

3.3BTC

3.4BTC  8)

Can I just buy one of them for .1 btc?

That would negate all the previous bids, so he'll probably say no :P

I'm confident you'll get something working, even without the soldering iron. How much you get out of it will be a question of perseverance and skill, though.

But I'm special!

Garrett, is right. But, you might be able to buy individual boards off of the winner.

Please take the comma out.  It's killing me.

Oh wait, you can't edit your posts.  Oh no :(

Oh no! That's why you shouldn't post, from, your, phone.

Might I suggest to people either to shit or get off the pot.

Bid already if you are interested.

4BTC

4.1

Well.  If the winner wants to sell me one board from the grab bag for $30 (PainPal or Bitcoin equivalent), I'd be very happy.

4.2btc

4.5BTC  :P

5btc

5.5BTC ;D

5.9

6btc

6.1 btc

6.2 BTC

6.3 btc

6.4BTC :D

6.5

7.0BTC  :o

Chips scavenged off one board worth almost 10X that.

That much?

If you'll pay that kind of coin, I have a dead CM1 board with 4 probably good chips I'll sell you for ~5 BTC.  PM me.

Why should I scrounge up customers for your dead boards? Do that yourself. Don't appreciate the LOW ball antics. If you want a piece put in a BID.

The Spartan 6 LX150 -2 speed-grade goes for around $100-$110 in tiny quantities, new.  I'm not sure how much they're worth second-hand.

32 chips vs your 4? Thanks not much of a deal there. 

Correction 36 vs 4.... and say you get 50 bucks per chip? I don't think 5BTC for 4 chips is what I will be doing. But go ahead start another thread might be someone interested. Can we focus on the bids again?

7.5btc

7.6 btc

I just gathered up everything that I'm planning to ship to the winner and took a photo:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13472215/forum/grabbag_s.jpg (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13472215/forum/grabbag.jpg)

A partial list:

• 16x X6500 rev 3 (rejected)
• 6x Spartan 6 XC6SLX150-3FG484C FPGAs (up from 4 advertised previously!!)
• 9x standard heatsink/fans
• 4x custom heatsink/fans made by Enzotech for us
• 2x Enzotech SLF-1 copper heatsink/fans
• 2x Enzotech SLF-1-Ultra copper heatsink/fans
• 2x Enzotech CNB-S1L copper heatsinks
• 2x Zalman "flower" heatsinks
• 2x 120 mm fan
• 92 mm fan
• 80 mm fan
• Spare voltage regulator modules
• Tons of standoffs, screws, and between board spacers
• Two big bags of various spare parts

This deal is getting better by the minute, and there's only about 1 day left to bid!

TBH 7.6 BTC is still much undervalued for this.
If customs wouldn't be quite as picky as they are over here, I'd bid like 50 BTC on it.

Board retail price would have been about 75 BTC, and I know MMQs are currently being sold for about 50% above retail if you want to get one quick, so that would still be an awesome deal even if you can only fix half of them. (And remember, a bunch of them are working at half their hashrate already!) Let alone all the other stuff in here. The FPGAs alone are worth another 5 BTC.

So if you can get all of the boards to work, this whole package would be worth around 120 BTC.
So if we deduct the raw FPGAs and ignore the various other parts, the 2.6 BTC left in the current bit roughly account for one working FPGA. I'm fairly sure that more than one will work out of the box :)

The discount I think rightfully should be pretty HUGE as the boards come with zero guarantee of working. You can also buy the x6500 working with seller warranty online at forums etc. for under BTC2 each so I am not sure where you get the BTC75 or BTC120 from.

Obviously the boards were also rejected for a reason. Even if you get a few of them to work, I am assuming it's likely that they either throw stales/hardware errors etc. I think the buyer is probably looking for a hobby project more then anything (I know I am not expecting a huge 'win' if I end up buying them, more treating it like a FPGA hobby project).

8btc

9btc

9.1 btc

10btc

11 BTC

Tell me where, I'll buy them all up :)
I'm not closely watching the forums, the numbers that I was quoting are from trades that I observed recently on IRC.

TheSeven can you sell naked board and i will build it .

if you are not going to make it anymore why you don't open source it instead of keeping the file collecting digital dust :P. 

This.

Also, 11.1 btc.

11.5btc

You know you need fairly advanced equipment to either salvage the chips, or to reball these?, It's not something you do with hot air, or your pancake griddle..

I'd guess that most of these boards shouldn't need reballing at all. The assembly house did x-ray inspection on the BGA, and took care of reworking any BGA failure. What we're likely to see here (and I haven't been able to personally inspect these boards either) is failed oscillator or voltage regolator modules/soldering.

How can you fix these shorts with an soldering iron?
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9fi69wbjj28ob6q/orbfzJ1aKW

Or wait now.. it's components on the other side we see..

Yes, those are just decoupling caps on the other side of the board.

Only a couple hours left to bid! Highest bid is 11.5 BTC. Are you going to let CJPOLO walk away with such a bargain? :D

12btc

Is fpgamining.com willing to opensource the software ever?

Or, rather the opensource the entire project including hardware, etc.

The software is already open source, but I'm working on open sourcing the hardware, too. That said, I'll provide the full schematic and bill of materials to the winner of the auction, to help with debugging.

12btc

Someone already bid 12 BTC, so you need to bid at least 12.1 BTC to be ahead.

12.5btc

That'll do. :)

An hour and a half left! Anyone else?

13btc


Cmon fizzisist you didnt have to go drumming up these other bidders  ;D

14btc

15btc

16btc

17btc

A quick warning, I'll unfortunately be away from the computer when the auction ends, but I'll go by the timestamp of posts to see the last post before midnight (UTC). I'll check in from my phone to post the winner, and I'll send off the payment address (GPG signed).

Thanks everyone for bidding!

So many bids came in while writing that last post I didn't manage to quote the right one! Right now wonko is ahead!

18btc

18.5 btc

Too rich for my blood Kimosabe. Good luck!

19btc

Come on, these are worth a lot more :)

19.1 btc

20btc

21btc

23.5btc

24bt

25.2

25 BTC

25.1btc

26btc

We have a winner!

I sincerely doubt these new members are going to pay.

well if the winner falls through I'm more than happy to pre-pay :D

danieldaniel I don't think making generalizations like this are useful as everyone has to start somewhere and you don't know if they will or not!

Hey, i put 25.2 before him.

Well they might not have, but I will. I await signed payment information and I will be in touch with my information.

Thank you good sirs! You have a fine product and I am grateful for all your hard work.

Can someone explain me why purplesquid won if i bidded higher and before him?

???

Stupid laptop.  My fingers aren't fast enough on this thing.

Maybe the winner will sell me a few pieces.  (please)

You were at 25 when I bid, mods can confirm the edit either way yes/no?

I was under the impression auction bids could not be edited.

I'm also curious why fgkrew wasn't declared the winner.

Not a native speaker here but i did not edit anything. i simply wrote 25.2 and posted.

What does it mean i was at 25? i posted only once. Im not following...

Sorry guys, I swear I saw 25 when I saw it come up and upped it on purpose by 0.1 but the no edits is true(at least for me)....hmmm, I guess this is probably not good for me :(

I think you must have seen Bogart's bid for 25btc, who's bid was invalid due to the 25.2 right before it.

Yup, no edit allowed.  My misuse of "who's" instead of "whose" is there forever. 

Sorry for the confusion. I'm not authoritative here anyway ;)

This bid was already outside of my screen when the end time was hit, and I must have completely overlooked it while following the last flurry of activity...

I also could have sworn that I saw 25 before the 25.1, but that was Bogart. The 25.2 was even before that, and went completely unnoticed, both by me and by other bidders, apparently.

So assuming everything works right, the bid quoted in this post should be the winner :)

Nice, just waiting for payment instructions now.

I see this as the winning bid. fgkrew, I'll send you a gpg signed address when I get home (sorry to make you wait). If for some reason I don't receive payment within 48 hours after sending the address, I will have to allow the next highest bidder to "steal." I doubt it will come to that.

Thanks!

Congratulations fgkrew! Let me know if you ever sell :D

Thanks for the auction all.

Just in case the winner doesn't have a use for the "raw" spartan chips in the package, who would take them off his hands, and how much would they be worth to you?

Nice catch, think you got yourself a good deal. Would have been bidding if I had more BTC.

GL etc.

It would be a nice way to practice my electronics and maybe make a little btc on the way.

For sure there will be something i will want to sell after i inspect the package.

If i do, i will put it for sale here in the forums.

I received payment from fgkrew, so this auction is complete. Thanks to everyone for bidding, especially the winner!

If/when you do, I'm interested in up to 4 boards.

I got my USB microscope last night, and it works pretty nicely for a $40 gadget.

Nice to see that I'm not the only one with a USB microscope.  ;D

To FPGA Mining LLC Principals: Have you given thought to evolving your X6500 to ASIC? You appear to have an exceptional foundation, and if your team can make the transition to ASIC and get to market quickly, there appears to be legions of buyers ready to acquire your product. To date, only a select few have had the privilege to acquire an ASIC device.

Ahah, i also have one of those somewhere, together with other ebay junk :)

how do I get that Countdown clock above and post it in the forum?

How did the winner do I wonder? Hashing away with the boards?